Leo ValledorColor As Space
In collaboration with WhiteBox - New York and part of Frieze New York VIP Program, “In The City”.April 30 - May 8, 2018Opening reception: Tuesday, May 1, 2018 6:00 - 8:00 PM

Leo Valledor: Color as Space - Panel Discussion

Leo Valledor: Color as Space - Panel Discussion

Leo Valledor (1936-1989), originally from San Francisco, was a founding member of Park Place Gallery in Lower Manhattan in the 1960s. He explored shaped canvases, reductive color palettes and multi-component canvases to create the illusion of three-dimensional shapes in a two-dimensional picture plane. Color As Space surveys Valledor’s use of color combined with rectangular, curvilinear and circular shaped canvases to create “sculptural tension” through painting.

David Richard Gallery is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition, Leo Valledor: Color As Space, the gallery’s third solo exhibition for the artist presented in collaboration with WhiteBox as part of the Frieze New York art fair 2018 VIP program, “In The City”. The opening reception will be Tuesday, May 1 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM and the presentation will remain on view through Tuesday, May 8, 2018 at WhiteBox, 329 Broome Street, New York, NY 10002, P: 212 714 2347. A public panel discussion will be held Monday, May 7 from 7:00 to 8:00 pm

The current exhibition, Color As Space, explores Leo Valledor’s interest in bold colors and vector geometry combined with curvilinear and circular shapes to explore space in the two-dimensional picture plane. The paintings in this presentation are from the 1980s and primarily single-panel compositions of moderate to smaller size. During this same period of time and throughout his entire career, Valledor also explored much larger and multi-component compositions. However, it is illuminating to see how he successfully applied torque and created tension on a moderate scale to produce his illusory and optical constructions that explored three-dimensional space while confined in a two-dimensional plane.

The influences and relationships while studying at the California School of Fine Arts and living in San Francisco in the 1950s as part of the Beat scene impacted Valledor’s artwork throughout his career. The interplay of jazz music, poetry and painting fed his soul and provided the necessary freedom to develop his own visual language, while rhythm and beat were constant, grounding him and inspiring many of his paintings. His transition to reductive palettes and approaches in the late 1950s followed by the move to New York allowed him to explore space and color in his dynamic and unique compositions. Valledor once said in the early 1960s, “I see color as space”. At that time, his sphere of influences included other members of the Park Place Group who shared an interest in exploring space through color and new visual approaches. Buckminster Fuller and vector geometry became an important part of that dynamic mix. Looking back at his transition and artworks from that same time, Valledor said in a statement in 1981, “My main interest was color and a switch to acrylic polymer. Abstract Expressionism became Hard Edge.”

Valledor was known for his hard edge painting and interest in color and geometry. However, the curvilinear shapes and circles were also an important part of his visual vocabulary and interest in space. Such forms were less confining and pushed the visual limits of his compositions, bringing a plasticity to his work and a metaphor for unbounded space. The less ridged and fixed shapes allow the viewer’s eye to move around freely and flow outside of the fixed confines of a conventional picture plane. Curvilinear and circular shapes became another one of Valledor’s many tools in his kit of economical means, along with color and shaped canvases, for exploring an expansive topic such as space and cueing viewers to look beyond the literalness of his compositions and see another world beyond. The viewer is encouraged to challenge visual perception and use their imagination.

About Leo Valledor:

Leo Valledor (1935-1989), a Filipino American artist who grew up in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, studied Abstract Expressionism at the California School of Fine Arts (currently, San Francisco Art Institute) and was part of the “Beat” scene—the cross cultural and dynamic fusion of visual art, jazz music and poetry. He exhibited his artwork at the 6 Gallery in San Francisco from 1954 to 1957 alongside Jay de Feo, Manuel Neri and Peter Forakis, among others. His first exhibition was the same year and location of Alan Ginsberg’s first public reading of his poem, Howl.

The late 1950s marked a dramatic shift in Valledor’s art to a reductive palette and simple geometric shapes. In 1961 he moved to New York and in 1962 became a founding member of the Park Place Group, an artist collective and exhibition venue for experimental art in Lower Manhattan. The founding members, many also transplants from the West Coast, were comprised of five painters: Dean Fleming, Tamara Melcher, David Novros, Edwin Ruda, Leo Valledor and five sculptors: Mark de Suvero, Peter Forakis, Robert Grosvenor, Anthony Magar and Forrest Myers. The gallery director was Paula Cooper. The group formed to explore their mutual interest in literal and illusory space, music and social concerns. In New York, Valledor’s new minimalist tendencies were appreciated by and exhibited with Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, Ed Ruda, Mark di Suvero, Peter Forakis and Tamara Melcher, among others. In 1968, Valledor returned to San Francisco where he continued to explore his unique abstract painting that extended musical harmonies and rhythms to shaped canvases and colors. Many of his paintings also produced optical effects as they played with the tension between the two-dimensional picture plane and three-dimensional space.

Leo Valledor had over 22 solo and two person exhibitions in important galleries and museums on both coasts, including Park Place Gallery and Graham Gallery in NY and 6 Gallery, Modernism, Dilexi Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco, as well as the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Valledor’s artwork is included in many important public and private collections, including: Achenbach Foundation, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, State Fair Community College, Sedalia, MO; De Young Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, CA; The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: “Fifty Works for Fifty States”; Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University, Logan, UT; Oakland Museum of California; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; SFMOMA, San Francisco, CA; St. Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway; US Department of State Art in Embassies Program, Washington D.C.; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT.

About WhiteBox:

WhiteBox is a non-profit art space that serves as a platform for contemporary artists to develop and showcase new site-specific work, and is a laboratory for unique commissions, exhibitions, special events, salon series, and arts education programs. WhiteBox offers free and diverse programs for the surrounding communities including Chinatown, the Lower East Side, and international cultural tourism to experience an artist’s work in a meaningful manner. It achieves this by inviting emerging and established artists to respond to its exhibition space with interventions, performances, and long-running public program series, that allow them to develop projects and engage with audiences.

WhiteBox

329 Broome Street
(Between Bowery and Chrystie)
New York, NY 10002

212-714-2347

This exhibition is made possible thanks to the generous support from David Richard Gallery, LLC and Artworks Advisory.